Chimgan and Charvak

The mountains begin an hour and a half from Tashkent. The road leaves the city through orchards, passes Gazalkent, climbs beside the dam at Charvak and comes out above the reservoir, a flat sheet of turquoise with bare hills around it and snow on the peaks beyond. From the shore two valleys climb, Beldersay and Chimgan. The resort at Chimgan stands at about 1,600 metres, some seven degrees cooler than the capital; above it Greater Chimgan rises to about 3,300 metres and keeps its snow into May. Nothing here is grand in the way the cities are. It is a lake, two valleys and a ridge, and that is the point.

The year turns in plain stages. Late April and May bring wild tulips, and once the snow is off the lower slopes the chairlift at Beldersay carries walkers up towards the ridge, where the path runs along the top with the water below and the last snow above. Summer is for the lake: by July the water is warm enough to swim in, the valleys are walked early and the middle of the day is spent in the shade of the walnut trees. October brings the colour, walnut and poplar turning yellow along the streams in the clearest air of the year. From December to March the city comes to ski, and the road carries skis, not walking boots. Snow can close it for a day, and we plan for that rather than pretend it does not happen.

We use Chimgan in two ways. The first is a night at the beginning or end of any journey: a quiet first night straight from the airport, or a last one in the mountains before the flight home. The second is our four-day Tashkent and the Mountains journey, two days in the capital and a night above the reservoir, a long weekend in itself or the first days of something longer. Chimgan is where Tashkent goes at the weekend, so Saturdays and Sundays in season are busy on the road, at the lift and along the shore, and a weekday night is quieter. The hotels are plain mountain hotels and chalets, nothing like the courtyard houses of Bukhara or Khiva. The villages of the Nuratau range, far to the west, are a different mountain altogether and are arranged separately; your travel designer will tell you which suits your dates.